Some Pittsburghers are being ticketed or warned not to park in their own driveways under an obscure ordinance that requires them to pay $225 for a permit if they wish to park within 30 feet of a street.

Some residents have complained about the tickets and warnings, which are issued by the city's Bureau of Building Inspection.

The agency is caught in the middle, contend John Jennings, its acting chief.

The bureau doesn't issue tickets unless residents complain and, often, those complaints aren't prompted by people who park in driveways but by those who create cement or gravel parking pads in front of their homes.

This isn't the first time this has come up. It's ridiculous. I love how the inspectors say they can but don't ticket people parking in their driveways only on parking pads. The law shouldn't exist period. They were trying to stop people building parking pads and parking their cars in their front yard, which people have done in Pittsburgh. If they want to make an ordinance against parking pads, they should specifically make an ordinance against parking pads. Like every bureaucracy, they overreached and abused. Imagine some working class guy with a family being forced to pay $2,400 in fines. That's huge! It's just a small piece of why the city has lost half it's population in the last 50 years. They really try to keep people away. A shining example is when the newpaper asked the councilman about it. The councilman says it's attributed to the 1950s or 1960s laws, not that it's unjust and he'll work to repeal or modify the law.

On another note with the Bureau of Building Inspection: when I got a permit for my new wood deck in my backyard, the inspector was required to enter my home and check for smoke detectors and carbon monoxide detectors by ordinance. I asked why. He stated it was an ordinance whenever a change in occupancy permit is issued, even for an exterior deck, the inspectors had to enter the home to check on these things.

In a free society, it is not the obligation of the citizen to prove to the government that he is a good person. It is the obligation of the government to prove to the rest of the citizenry that the citizen is a bad person, with probable cause.

The city of Pittsburgh has an ordinance for everything. I can just see how the parking in the driveway ordinance came to be. A councilman probably had a neighbor park his work truck in his own driveway. The councilman didn't like the looks of the dirty pick up or dump truck and decided to do something about it. In a corrupt city like Pittsburgh, he made a few promises and tradeoffs and an ordinance against parking in one's own driveway was passed. Unsightly truck problem solved. Now, the law is on the books and MUST be enforced.

It's the perfect argument against big government. The slippery slope is usually a logical fallacy in an argument. However, I've found the slippery slope is generally a logical truism and almost a certainty when it comes to people amassing power at any level. Give someone a little power or a lot (size is irrelevant) and they will abuse it. A large portion of society wants to implement their beliefs based on their own perspective. They believe that they are correct and everyone else should do it their way. Most of the time, it's not malicious. It can be attributed to traits of arrogance and conceit, which comprise everyone's human nature. It doesn't matter if the person is on the local school board, the city council, a federal bureaucrat or the president of the United States. They invade every aspect of your life because that is the way "you should be doing it". There is no respect for your wishes. There is no respect for your privacy. There is no respect for your liberty. They know better. It is in the nature of most people to be controlling. And given the chance, a person will exercise his power no matter at which level of power he maintains.

In a free society, it is not the obligation of the citizen to prove to the government that he is a good person. It is the obligation of the government to prove to the rest of the citizenry that the citizen is a bad person, with probable cause.

The real problem is that they are not enforcing the law properly. If they were the citizens would raise enough hell to get rid of the stupid law. Either get rid of it or enforce it fully. The wishy washy BS is how stupid laws stay in effect.